Dave Pollard's chronicle of civilization's collapse, creative works and essays on our culture. A trail of crumbs, runes and exclamations along my path in search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

The End of Philosophy

One of my readers asked me recently for a short list of the books from my Save the WorldReading List that were most influential in forming my natural/environmental philosophy. Here’s what I answered:

In logical reading order:

Full House — Stephen Jay Gould

When Elephants Weep — Jeff Masson

Freeman Dyson’s Brain — Wired Magazine

The Story of B — Daniel Quinn

A Language Older Than Words — Derrick Jensen

The World We Want — Mark Kingwell

The Spell of the Sensuous — David Abram

The Truth About Stories — Thomas King

Humans in the Wilderness — Glenn Parton

Against the Grain — Richard Manning

The Commonwealth of Life – Peter Brown

A Short History of Progress — Ronald Wright

(Haven’t found it yet — will report when I have)

Well, the missing and perhaps final slot on this list has now been filled, by London School of Economics Philosophy professor John Gray’s Straw Dogs.

The book is three years old, and perhaps because some readers thought it had something to do with the Peckinpah film of the same name, they gave it a pass. I knew I’d found something important even before I’d finished the Introduction of this astonishing tour de force.

The structure of the book — a rambling but disciplined narrative of a philosophical learning voyage, based substantially on a series of quotes from dozens of thinkers from many different disciplines, leading to a tentative conclusion — is very similar to my paper How to Save the World — though I wouldn’t presume that either the argument or breadth of research of my work compares to Gray’s. Philosophy is, after all, how he makes his living. But I find this structure, similar as it is to a story of personal discovery, a compelling one. Furthermore, Gray’s annotated bibliography is laid out in parallel to his story, so you can see his stepping stones in arriving at the bleak place where his intellectual voyage has taken him.

In a mere 200 pages, Gray lays out a courageous yet grim philosophy that is utterly unique, and in the process quickly deconstructs and discards all the major schools of philosophical, political, social, economic, religious, scientific and ecological thought, from pre-history to post-modernism. Even nihilism is debunked as naive romantic fantasy. His thesis is stark, simple and relentless: We humans have not changed and cannot change what we are, what we do, how we behave or what we value. We are doomed by the coding in our DNA to continue along our inexorable path of self-destruction, and to inflict large-scale but ultimately transitory damage on our planet in the process.

This view recalls Ronald Wright’s wry summation of human destiny from A Short History of Progress:

It’s entirely up to us. If we fail — if we blow up or degrade the biosphere so it can no longer sustain us — nature will merely shrug and conclude that letting apes run the laboratory was fun for a while but in the end a bad idea.

Except that in Gray’s view it is not up to us at all. Our role was cast millennia ago, and we’re merely playing it out. Quoting EO Wilson “Darwin’s dice have rolled badly for Earth”, Gray goes on: “The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialization, Western civilization, or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate.”

If he is correct, Gray would seem to be counseling and chronicling nothing less than the end of philosophy, the end of the need or purpose for studying and analyzing human thought and ideas. If what has driven all our behaviour for all of human history is subconscious, programmed, inevitable, what possible purpose is there for study of, value judgements about, proposed actions in respect of, or recriminations for, the marginal and insignificant part of humans called consciousness? It is like the royal court debating what words the king should use to order back an impending tidal wave.

In this review, I’m going to save the remarkable first chapter of Straw Dogs until last, and quote from it extensively. In that chapter, simply called The Human, Gray puts it all out there. The remaining four chapters present a more measured, but still breakneck, argument in support of his disdain for the still-accepted mythologies of, respectively, philosophy, morality, religion and technology. Where many find solace and hope in human capacity to reason, in human standards of ethics, in faith, and in the promise of science and ‘progress’, Gray finds merely illusion, distraction, deception, and folly.

In Chapter Two Gray recounts the entire history of ‘rational’ philosophy and our obsession with seeking Truth. “The truth will set you free” the Christian bible says. But Gray says the humanist search for Truth is wasted effort, that we would be better off looking for it in all the animals we are slowly crowding off the planet. In his philosophy Gray aligns himself most closely with Schopenhauer, Hume and the Taoists, and he wades scornfully through the philosophies of Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Spinoza, Pascal, the Greeks, the Buddhists, the Postmodernists, the ‘Cult of Personality’, ‘heightened consciousness’ movements, and the illusion of ‘free will’ (“as organisms we process 14 million bits of information per second; the bandwidth of consciousness is around eighteen bits”). He calls the belief that we as individuals and as a species have control of ourselves and our world The Deception.

We labour under an error. We act in the belief that we are all of one piece, but we are able to cope with things only because we are a succession of fragments. We cannot shake off the sense that we are enduring selves, and yet we know we are not.

In Chapter Three Gray moves on from rational philosophy to moral philosophy and our obsession with seeking Fairness and Justice. He discounts morality as sheer superstition and documents the long history of human genocide, cruelty and injustice. He shows that our concept of justice is as ephemeral as our sense of fashion. He condemns what morality is forcing us to try, impossibly, to do (“to live as if we were free”) and instead counsels the Taoist approach (“the good life is only the natural life lived skilfully; it has no particular purpose, and nothing to do with the will or trying to realize any ideal…The core of ethics is not choice or conscious awareness, but the knack of knowing what to do. It is a skill that comes with practice and an empty mind; it means living effortlessly, according to our natures.”) This strikes me as entirely consistent with reconnecting with our instincts, the knowledge that is encoded in our DNA.

Then in Chapter Four Gray turns to all the forms of religious faith, from animism through to our modern faith in human ingenuity, science, technology, and even post-humanism, and their incessant obsession with Salvation..”It is rare that individuals value their freedom more than the comfort that comes with servility, and rarer still for whole peoples to do so”, he laments. Modern man no longer really needs salvation, and now looks to religions, old and new, as a distraction, an entertainment. Gray is especially hard on Christianity, which he says was novel in believing that there is only one ‘true’ God, and launching hundreds of wars and atrocities in defence of that misplaced faith. “Polytheism”, he says, “is too delicate a way of thinking for modern minds”. The main difference between humans and other animals is perhaps, he says, that they do not fear death because they are not burdened by time and do not, like humans, “cling abjectly to life”. He is particularly disdainful of modern religions that drive us to aspire to self-mastery and self-improvement (including many oriental religions, the teachings of Gurdjieff, Marx and the Bolsheviks, the Gnostics, the believers in higher consciousness from drugs, virtual reality, ‘lucid dreaming’ or post-humanism, and, presumably, the even more recent new age leaders like Wilber).

Finally in Chapter Five, Gray focuses on our most recent and now all-consuming faith in Progress. He reiterates recent revisions in our perception of ‘prehistoric man’ (expounded e.g. by Sahlins, by Quinn, and by Manning) — that prehistoric man’s life was in fact not ‘nasty, short and brutish’ but rather much healthier, freer and easier than ours. But he ridicules those who romanticize prehistoric man, claiming that man has been rapacious and wasteful since our first appearance on the planet, and never lived in peaceful harmony with the rest of life on Earth — and never will. Our evolution from hunter-gatherer to farmer to industrial worker to ‘knowledge worker’ was utterly involuntary, a forced evolution by factors over which we had and have no control. In our new economy, when we are no longer needed for brute labour or even warfare, we have invented new jobs amusing each other, entertaining and distracting ourselves from our own economic uselessness.

Our only real religion is a shallow faith in the future…[Meanwhile] the pressure to maintain social cohesion is relaxed. The wealthy can pass their lives without contact with the rest of society. So long as they do not post a threat to the rich, the poor can be left to their own devices. Social democracy has been replaced by an oligarchy of the rich as part of the price of peace.

Our modern Western obsession with violence and crime, well supported by the entertainment ‘industry’ and the media, stems from the need for constant distraction from our uselessness. And the consumer society demands “deviant and unexpected” novelties to keep us buying. All of the counterculture myths of the last two centuries have merely fed this boredom, this longing for action, an escape from emptiness, and these myths have merely fueled the economy and the houses of religion further, in self-perpetuation. Morality is once again the new novelty of this decade. Meanwhile the new wave of political movements like Al Qaeda operate exactly like the modern corporation they are modeled after — stateless, privatized, exploiting the weakness of individual states for their own advantage, their own ‘bottom line’. “[Although caused by competitive pressure], war is often embraced as a release. Like tyranny, it promises to cut the cord of circumstance that tethers average humanity to its chores. As with tyranny, the promise is fraudulent. If war is celebrated, it is because for much of humankind it stands for a dream of freedom…Among bored consumers in rich post-military societies, it has become another entertainment. Real war, like smoking, has become a habit of the poor.”

Truth, Morality, Salvation, Progress. If these are all illusions, deranged fantasies without substance or value, where then do we turn for answers? It is in the opening chapter, The Human, where Gray reassembles and digests the arguments of the subsequent four chapters and hones them razor sharp. I cannot pretend to be able to distill this already highly synthesized argument any further, so here are a bakers’ dozen powerful passages from this staggering 30-page essay-within-a-book:

Humanism can mean many things, but for us it means belief in progress. To believe in progress is to believe that, by using the new powers given to us by growing scientific knowledge, humans can free themselves from the limits that frame the lives of other animals. This is the hope of nearly everybody nowadays, but it is groundless. Humanists insist that by using our knowledge we can control our environment and flourish as never before — a secular version of Christianity’s most dubious promise that salvation is open to all.James Lovelock has written: Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathological organism, or like the cells of a tumour or neoplasm. We have grown in numbers and disturbance to Gaia, to the point where our presence is perceptively disturbing…the human species is now so numerous as to constitute a serious planetary malady. Gaia is suffering from disseminated primatemaia, a plague of people. A human population of approaching 8 billion can be maintained only by desolating the Earth. If wild habitat is given over to human cultivation and habitation, if rainforests can be turned into green deserts, if genetic engineering enables ever-higher yields to be extorted from the thinning soils — then humans will have created for themselves a new geological era, the Eremozoic, the Era of Solitude, in which little remains on the Earth but themselves and the prosthetic environment that keeps them ‘alive’.[Quoting Reg Morrison, The Spirit in the Gene] If the human plague is really as normal as it looks, then the collapse curve should mirror the growth curve. This means the bulk of the collapse will not take much longer than 100 years, and by 2150 the biosphere should be safely back to its preplague population of Homo Sapiens — somewhere between a half and one billion.

Climate change may be a mechanism through which the planet eases its human burden…[or] new patterns of disease could trim the human population…War could have a major impact…weapons of mass destruction — notably biological and (soon) genetic weapons, more fearsome than before…It is not the number of states that makes this technology ungovernable. It is technology itself. The ability to design new viruses for use in genocidal weapons does not require enormous resources of money, plant or equipment…In part, governments have created this situation. By ceding so much control over new technology to the marketplace, they have colluded in their own powerlessness.

If anything about the present century is certain, it is that the power conferred on ‘humanity’ by new technologies will be used to commit atrocious crimes against it. If it becomes possible to clone human beings, soldiers will be bred in whom normal human emotions are stunted or absent. Genetic engineering may enable centuries-old diseases to be eradicated. At the same time, it is likely to be the technology of choice in future genocides. Those who ignore the destructive potential of new technologies can only do so because they ignore history. Pogroms are as old as Christendom; but without railways, the telegraph and poison gas there could have been no Holocaust. There have always been tyrannies, but without modern means of transport and communication, Stalin and Mao could not have built their gulags. Humanity’s worst crimes were made possible only by modern technology.

For much of their history and all of prehistory, humans did not see themselves as being any different from the other animals among which they lived. Hunter-gatherers saw their prey as equals, if not superiors, and animals were worshipped as divinities in many traditional cultures. The humanist sense of a gulf between ourselves and other animals is an aberration. Feeble as it is today, the feeling of sharing a common destiny with other living things is embedded in the human psyche. Those who struggle to conserve what is left of the natural environment are moved by the love of living things, biophilia, the frail bond of feeling that ties humankind to the Earth.

The mass of mankind is ruled not by its own intermittent moral sensations, still less by self-interest, but by the needs of the moment. It seems fated to wreck the balance of life on Earth — and thereby to be the agent of its own destruction. What could be more hopeless than placing the Earth in the charge of this exceptionally destructive species? It is not of becoming the planet’s wise stewards that Earth-lovers dream, but of a time when humans have ceased to matter.

Science has been used to support the conceit that humans are unlike all other animals in their ability to understand the world. In fact, its supreme value may be in showing that the world humans are programmed to perceive is a chimera.

In a competition for mates, a well-developed capacity for self-deception is an advantage. Truth has no systematic evolutionary advantage over error.

Humans use what they know to meet their most urgent needs — even if the result is ruin. When times are desperate they act to protect their offspring, to revenge themselves on enemies, or simply to give vent to their feelings. These are not flaws that can be remedied. Science cannot be used to reshape humankind in a more rational mould. The upshot of scientific inquiry is that humans cannot be other than irrational.

[As Gould showed] Once life has emerged, it evolves by the natural selection of random mutations. The human species is no different from any other in being just one throw in the cosmic lottery… Man must accept that his/her existence is entirely accidental. [Quoting Jacques Monod] He must realize that he lives on the boundary of an alien world; a world that is deaf to his music and as indifferent to his hopes as it is to his suffering and his crimes.

[Referring to the ancient Chinese ritual of creating, worshipping and then discarding straw dogs] If humans disturb the balance of Earth they will be trampled on and tossed aside. Critics of Gaia theory say they reject it because it is ‘unscientific’. The truth is that they fear and hate it because it means that humans can never be other than straw dogs.

Gray saves his criticism of environmentalists until later, but finds them (us) just as foolish and unrealistic as the supporters of religions and philosophical dogma:

We can dream of a world in which a greatly reduced human population lives in a partially restored paradise; in which farming has been abandoned and green deserts given back to the earth; where the remaining humans are settled in cities, emulating the noble idleness of hunter-gatherers, their needs met by new technologies that leave little mark on the Earth; where life is given over to curiosity, pleasure and play. There is nothing technically impossible about such a world…A High-tech Green utopia, in which a few humans live happily in balance with the rest of life, is scientifically feasible; but it is humanly unimaginable. If anything like this ever comes about, it will not be through the will of homo rapiens.

I accept, with great reluctance but some relief, the logic of this argument. But I cannot help wondering if Gray threw this passage, buried near the end of the book, down as a kind of dare, a gauntlet, a challenge. Prove me wrong, he seems to be saying. Please. No matter how much I accept his argument, I can still do no less than try to prove him wrong. That is what I, perhaps, have been programmed to do, but it changes nothing. I will try, John, to show you that, at least in this, you are mistaken.

The Introduction to this book was written a year later than the rest, in May 2003, and it concludes with this wonderful summation of the entire book:

Political action has come to be a surrogate for salvation; but no political project can deliver humanity from its natural condition. However radical, political programmes are expedients — modest devices for coping with recurring evils. Hegel writes that humanity will be content only when it lives in a world of its own making. In contrast, Straw Dogs argues for a shift from human solipsism [belief in our aloneness and our disconnection from everything else]. Humans cannot save the world, but this is no reason for despair. It does not need saving. Happily, humans will never live in a world of their own making.

Wade through the twelve readings in my critical list in the green box at the start of this review, and you will find many diagnoses of human nature and the human condition, and prescriptions for turning our nature and our talents to create a Future State better than the desperate and desolate one in which we live today. All of these prescriptions call for some kind of collective awareness, collective understanding, and hence collective action. Gray would have us believe that belief in the possibility of such collective phenomena is absurd, unwarranted, unsubstantiable, even insane. So what do we do? Gray says to do nothing more than becoming more our animal selves — reconnecting with the rest of life on Earth and with our primeval senses and instincts, getting outside our heads, coping with contingencies, relearning to play, living in the moment, turning back to real, mortal things, and simply seeing what is.

What we need to answer now is whether this philosophy-ending neo-determinism just gives us a convenient excuse to stop trying to ‘save the world’, or whether Gray is right and we are wasting our time and our lives trying, perhaps even making the situation worse. It is hard to come to grips with, and accept, the conclusion that our species’ time on this planet is coming quickly and inexorably to a most unpleasant end, that we ‘alone’ of the billions who have walked this planet might actually witness, and are witnessing already the early signs of the next great and inevitable extinction of life on our planet. As Gray says:

Homo rapiens is only one of very many species, and not obviously worth preserving. Later or sooner, it will become extinct. When it is gone Earth will recover. Long after the last traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up. The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on.

But I confess, I have this strong urge to stop writing now, and to spend the rest of the day playing with Chelsea the dog. And then to go for a walk in the woods, and wonder.

25 Responses to The End of Philosophy

I accept, with great reluctance but some relief, the logic of this argument.I can understand the relief in abandoning hope. Surely everyone feels the temptation. But Dave, what argument? There’s no argument there. It’s a statement of a particular — and particularly misanthropic — point of view. “All is lost.” Every single argument thus far in human history that the end is nigh has been proven wrong. Maybe this one is right, but I don’t see any “argument” involved. I see a guy on a street corner soap box, waving a placard.You should not mistake your aesthetic or temperamental affection for this kind of talk as the result of reasoned argumentation.

Sorry Dave — I was unclear what I was saying. He does make the argument, quite eloquently, for this point of view in the book — I should have at least summarized or given a page reference for the argument, but this post was already so long I didn’t want to make it longer! Although you should read the book to get a fair statement of it, the essence of the argument is that humanity collectively has not and cannot change dramatically or quickly, which he supports with a succinct history of our inability to do so, and that we are by nature a rapacious and acquisitive species and that regardless of our intelligence, ‘will’ or acquired knowledge we cannot be what we are not — this claim too is supported by many supporting examples. So I think he makes a compelling and well-supported argument for this in the book (which I should have said more clearly) — but on this score, at least, I’m still determined to prove him wrong.

Hmm. I don’t think I’m going to agree on much of Gray’s commentary. For starters:“We labour under an error. We act in the belief that we are all of one piece, but we are able to cope with things only because we are a succession of fragments. We cannot shake off the sense that we are enduring selves, and yet we know we are not.”Sounds like a perfect description of a perpetuating series of cellular automata — the collection or series is enduring, each individual automata is not. ;-)If one cannot see the dualistic particle/wave action, one might well believe either particle or wave is an error in thought.I take exception with his comments on animals lacking a fear of death; we simply do not know what animals think. For all we know, they do fear death but simply have a different belief system or response mechanism (Wilber, as alternative perspective, believes animals are a group consciousness; hence the death of one animal does not instill fear since the group continues). Lacking the ability to “know” and share animals’ cognition, we cannot say.I don’t think I can even subscribe to his cynicism and fatalism about the human race. We are emerging from humanity, no longer allowing the genome to do its will on auto-pilot; we are actively intervening in our reproduction, in some cases not even using the equipment we’ve been given in order to reproduce. If we are not yet fully post-human we are certainly transhuman; if we are not human, then how is it that we are doomed to live out a human destiny?I’ll also ask: define changing “dramatically” or “quickly”? Inside a handful of decades we have discovered and utilized the power of the atom; we have changed the diagnosis of cancer or heart attack from a death sentence for all to one of recovery for many, even shuffled human organs between humans to save the lives of transplant patients; we’ve discovered our own coding and begun to tinker with it and with the coding ofother animals and plants; we’ve left this planet and gone out beyond our solar system. And that’s just scratching the surface. If we suffer from anything, it’s a lack of political will and the moral fortitude to focus on the betterment of our kind and our planet, not from inability.There’s more to which I object, on the face of it, but perhaps I’ll have to read this work to be certain. I can see where one might have an entirely negative perspective of humanity — but as a mother, I also see and experience incredible potential in it, as well. Perhaps the biggest single current challenge we humans/emerging post-humans face is that we don’t listen enough to the mothers of the world; I note that none of the authors on your list are women. Perhaps we would write of an entirely different future for the children we’ve borne and will bear.

Intellect — an interesting experiment of evolution. Of course, the insects are probably best off though the ways of a simple coyote seem good to me.I’m reminded of the assured and confident libation made by herbalists upon a quotidian moon during night’s wee hours, “a plague upon humanity.”

Questions … How much of “what’s wrong with humans” is really just “what’s wrong with USA-like way of life”? If he really believes that, has he committed suicide yet (not that I’m suggesting it, I really don’t)? As a general question – how much in “truth” is simply lack of imagination – lack of capacity to think of alternatives? As far as I can tell, I’ll be dead someday (and from then onwards) – but I wonder …

There are different levels of despair. You have biological determinism, the Earth not giving a damn about us, and the laws of thermodynamics which don’t care about the Earth. If the last doesn’t imply despair (and it really shouldn’t) I’m not sure why the second should.In the really long run we’re all dead, in the long run things change, and in the short run we’re at least partially subservient to genetics. If you’re not religious, this isn’t news.

It is fascinating to see Gray echo exactly the same pessimistic end to human life that Hinduism has spoken about for more than 3000 years…As Keynes said, in the long run, we are all dead. It will be a while before I get comfortable with this inevitability. In this scenario, what should be my firm’s 500-year manifesto?

Gray describes the ascendence of Copernican cosmology as a political phenomenon without even mentioning the invention of the telescope. He likens human population trends to those seen in rabbit populations, even though rabbits are r-strategy reproducers and humans are K-strategy. He has a few good ideas, as I mention in the review on my web site. But he demonstrates such a fundamental break with reality that his conclusions are not to be trusted.

This is probably the best review of Gray’s wonderful book that I have yet found. His work is truly a remarkable example of philosophical thought, and practically unique in its argument that nature ought not to be defined based on our perceptions of it.Many have argued that Gray should not be trusted as, over the course of his career, he has had something of a 180 degree shift in his outlook. This is disingeneous as it presupposes that systems of thought developed or foisted upon us at an early age (or, indeed, at any age) should be the systems of thought that we subscribe to throughout our entire lives. I was raised Catholic, and then became an agnostic, and now I am an atheist. I used to think I wanted a television with a flatter screen, fashionable clothes, a nice big car – now I don’t just not want those things, but I actively discourage others from acquiring them.And I still can’t agree with myself on one issue. Recently married to a wonderful woman, I would like to have children with her. But at the same time, I know that the last thing this world needs is more children, and I am hypocritical in that I look upon pregnant women and young families with disdain. I wonder how they could be so selfish, and so ignorant. Subjectively speaking, kids can be great, but objectively, they’re the worst idea around.Peter Singer is the same. He rightly says that euthanasia is ethical, but at the same time, did not euthanise a close relative (I am afraid I don’t recall whom) when given the choice. Does this mean we should take nothing from his thought? Inconsistency is a myth – nothing is consistent. Science, religion, philosophy all have their foibles, mistruths, and outright lies. But an intelligent person will be able to recognise these things, and take what he or she needs from them, while leaving the rest alone.Anyway, possibly I’m full of shit, but I just wanted to comment on your excellent article. I will be blogrolling your site and look forward to readingmore of your stuff. Ave atque vale.

I second Matt B. This Gray fellow seems to selectively discard some human ideas like science and reason while retaining others like Gaia and the distinction between humans and the rest of the world.Any given species has its essence encoded in its DNA, so that its offspring are like the parents. The earth has no DNA, and thus “Gaia” has no inherent essence. It is entirely defined by its inhabitants. Once upon a time Gaia was made up of methane-breathing bacteria. Sometime in the future, it may be entirely subject to the needs of humans. There is no inherent contradiction in saying so. I see no evidence that Gaia punishes any particularly rapacious species. I know of no example of it happening. So why should it happen to humans? I think that all Gray’s theory is, is an elaborate masquerade around the archetype of original sin and the Garden of Eden. The feeling that guides him is that humans are committing a crime against the earth, and that universal justice demands that we be wiped out in response. But since he (rightly) discards universal morality, this is an utterly senseless viewpoint. Humans may of course become extinct, but the only reason to expect it to happen in the near future is based on just such a moral view.

Gray’s comment about animals having no fear of death is ridiculous. Anyone who has ever gone fishing knows that once you’ve hooked a fish it will fight to stay in the water and off of the dinner plate.

We have proved by our own scientific laws that the planet and the life on it has been “created” and has not evolved. If one studies science and geology, then one will see that evolution proves to be in conflict with reality. No mutation has ever improved the DNA code, always de graded it. That evidence proves that “evolution” is scientifically impossible.

lifebalance said — “same pessimistic end to human life that Hinduism has spoken about for more than 3000 years”.Huh ? Hinduism speaks about pessimistic end to human life ? and you got this impression from ….. ?

Regarding the discussion of Chapter 3 ,concerning morality. I find it instructive to examine human culture as abstractions, octaves more or less, of animal functions. I think it quite clear that our systems of morality are based on being mammals who care for our young. and our young are esp in need of care because our brains develop fully in the womb without becoming too big for the vaginal opening.we’re still gestating after birth As such recognizing wrong -danger, predator etc. and being selfless are expressions of DNA. Our abstraction of these into principles is the problem. Having memory,imagination,from which grow representational systems we have the ability to generalize. Moral systmes are generalizations of survival responses gone amuck when no longer necessary. To merely dismiss them as superstition without examining the biological roots does not impress me as consistant with the notion of biology being destiny that seems to be Gray’s thing.

Dave,I started Straw Dogs but found it hard to read. Judging from your review and the rich vein of comments, clearly the fault was mine. I plan to go back and re-read.On influential books: the Panarchy reader (co-edited by Buzz Hollings) or the recent popularisation by your fellow Canadian Thomas Homer-Dixon might deserve a place if you expand your reading list to 16 or 17.Thanks for that.

I humbly (and persistently) suggest Byron Katie’s Loving What Is for #13 (or perhaps #1.)Katie is deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, and I have no doubt that she will have a greater influence on more lives than any past recipient.If we aren’t clear minded, we’re destined to fumble along as confusedly as we have throughout the history of our civilization (since the Great Forgetting, to use Quinn’s term.)The videos at http://www.thework.com on “future” and “prejudice” are excellent examples of Katie doing The Work.As much as individuals can benefit from The Work in their personal lives, I think there may be potential for it to benefit your efforts, mine, and those of others who would like to work together to preserve life on this planet.

Dave, I humbly (and persistently) suggest Byron Katie’s Loving What Is for #13 (or perhaps #1.)Katie is deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, and I have no doubt that she will have a greater influence on more lives than any past recipient.If we aren’t clear minded, we’re destined to fumble along as confusedly as we have throughout the history of our civilization (since the Great Forgetting, to use Quinn’s term.)The videos at http://www.thework.com on “future” and “prejudice” are excellent examples of Katie doing The Work.As much as individuals can benefit from The Work in their personal lives, I think there may be potential for it to benefit your efforts, mine, and those of others who would like to work together to preserve life on this planet.